Last fall, I volunteer to make a few desserts for our local county fair. It hadn't been held for 2 years due to COVID and the baking competition coordinator was worried there would not be enough entries for this fair. So I made a dessert for each of the entries, including a double-crust apple pie category sponsored by our local apple orchard. I decided to make a test pie first which turned out perfectly. However, the actual entry pie ended up a fiasco:
[wigs had posted a recipe for the perfect apple pie]
I'm sitting here, reading this while my oven is "auto-cleaning." It's doing that because the ENTIRE INTERNAL SURFACE is covered with sticky apple-y juice with the perfect amount of spices, my own applesauce and my own reduced apple cider syrup. I know it was perfect because I did a test pie earlier in the day so I knew exactly what to adjust: more cinnamon, less lemon, more sugar, a bit more grinds of nutmeg and black pepper. And why is this, you may ask? It's because the double crust apple pie that I made last night for the county fair today decided to overflow. And overflow. And overflow. And then it cracked my pizza stone. And then smoke began to billow from every crevice. And then the smoke alarm started blaring. And then I pulled the silicone oven liner out and all the sticky stuff slide off its non-stick surface onto the bottom of the oven. So I finally pulled the pie out and it CONTINUED TO BUBBLE OVER all over my glass stove stop. My pot holders are covered with sticky syrup. My dish towels are covered with sticky apple syrup. My wrists are burnt from sticky apple syrup.
And then, beyond all possible expectations, this happened at the fair:
And finally Dorie Greenspan's All American Pie--with my additions. I've already written up that debacle in wig's thread, but it won Barber's Apple Orchard second place. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??? There was no filling left in that pitiful pie...it was crust with a bunch of sliced apples.
And THEN I find out that the winning entries are auctioned off and this hollow shell masquerading as a pie was bought for $40.
Now I felt REALLy bad.
So today--as a long delayed apology--I baked a peach pie for the person who had bought that mess of an apple pie. I used the same Dorie Greenspan all butter double crust, but with mariaD's peach pie filling. I made a few adjustments:
I just handed it over to the daughter of the woman who had bought the pie and she'll take it to her today. She kept telling me it wasn't necessary and I replied that maybe not to her, but it was important that I correct that disappointing failure.
[wigs had posted a recipe for the perfect apple pie]
I'm sitting here, reading this while my oven is "auto-cleaning." It's doing that because the ENTIRE INTERNAL SURFACE is covered with sticky apple-y juice with the perfect amount of spices, my own applesauce and my own reduced apple cider syrup. I know it was perfect because I did a test pie earlier in the day so I knew exactly what to adjust: more cinnamon, less lemon, more sugar, a bit more grinds of nutmeg and black pepper. And why is this, you may ask? It's because the double crust apple pie that I made last night for the county fair today decided to overflow. And overflow. And overflow. And then it cracked my pizza stone. And then smoke began to billow from every crevice. And then the smoke alarm started blaring. And then I pulled the silicone oven liner out and all the sticky stuff slide off its non-stick surface onto the bottom of the oven. So I finally pulled the pie out and it CONTINUED TO BUBBLE OVER all over my glass stove stop. My pot holders are covered with sticky syrup. My dish towels are covered with sticky apple syrup. My wrists are burnt from sticky apple syrup.
And then, beyond all possible expectations, this happened at the fair:
And finally Dorie Greenspan's All American Pie--with my additions. I've already written up that debacle in wig's thread, but it won Barber's Apple Orchard second place. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??? There was no filling left in that pitiful pie...it was crust with a bunch of sliced apples.
And THEN I find out that the winning entries are auctioned off and this hollow shell masquerading as a pie was bought for $40.
Now I felt REALLy bad.
So today--as a long delayed apology--I baked a peach pie for the person who had bought that mess of an apple pie. I used the same Dorie Greenspan all butter double crust, but with mariaD's peach pie filling. I made a few adjustments:
- per me, I substituted chilled leaf lard for 2 TBL of the butter. There was still 14 TBL of butter in the crust (oh, I just wrote "curse"...is that my problem???)
- per King Arthur, I spread a 1:1 mixture of flour & sugar on the bottom crust to help with sogginess.
- per Dorie Greenspan, I spread 2 TBL of dry bread crumbs to also assist with sogginess issues.
- per wigs, I adjusted the 1/2 C of flour in the filling and used 1/4 C ground quick tapioca and 1/4 C flour as the pie thickener
- per several thousand articles I read, I refrigerated the dough after rolling it, after shaping it in the pie pan and before baking it. That's a LOT of chilling time, but the dough did not shrink or melt due to the cold dough, the 425 initial temperature, baking it on a pizza stone and the live chicken I sacrificed.
- per mariaD, I used a glass pie dish so I could confirm the bottom crust was fully baked and brown.
- per AngieAK, I bought a used glass pie plate at the thrift shop so I could just give the pie away and no one had to worry about giving back plates.
I just handed it over to the daughter of the woman who had bought the pie and she'll take it to her today. She kept telling me it wasn't necessary and I replied that maybe not to her, but it was important that I correct that disappointing failure.
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